People and Communities

The People and Communities programme is designed to support you to work with local people to bring about positive changes in your community. A community could be a geographical area or a community of interest.

Grants can be made between £30,000 and £500,000 for two to five year projects.

Grants awarded will mainly be for revenue with some capital grants available up to £100,000.

We can support social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals, community interest companies as well as voluntary and community groups.

We will only consider applications from organisations specifically targeting young people to the People and Communities programme if they are outside the age range of our Empowering Young People programme (8-25). If an applicant already has a project funded under EYP then we are unable to accept another proposal from them to this programme.

Our programme will support projects that clearly meet the following two programme outcomes:

people make changes that improve their lives and

communities build on their strengths and share learning.

We are looking for projects that embrace the three key themes of the programme and have put together a series of blogs to help you better understand what we mean:

People-led: this means the people you’ll be working with will be meaningfully involved in the development, design and delivery of your project. Have you spoken to people in your community about your project? Have you listened to what they've said and used it to design a better project?

Strengths-based: we’d like to support people and communities to build on the knowledge, skills and experience they already have to make the changes they want. What is working well in your community? How can we support you to make those things even better?

Connected: We want to know that you have a good understanding of other activities and services in your community and can show how your project will complement these. Have you spoken to other groups in your area that are doing similar or related work? Have you thought about how you could support each other?

To help you understand what we are looking for, we have compiled some stories about our funded projects that are already strengths-based, people-led and connected:

Over the last few years, you have told us that you would prefer to have a chat with us about your project idea before you start to complete an application form. This will help you to make sure your idea fits with our programme criteria and gives us the chance to provide you with some valuable support.

We have listened to you and have opened a dedicated phone line to give you support when applying to the People and Communities programme. You can call the helpline on 0300 123 33 31 to get more information or talk through your project idea with our team.

This isn’t an assessment – the helpline is there to support you to develop your project idea and talk through any questions you have. You shouldn't worry that you only have one chance to call. Remember you can call back again for advice at any time including when you are working on your application. To get the most out of the phone call, make sure that you read the below programme information and have embraced the three key themes of:

people-led

strengths-based

connected.

If we feel that you need to do some work on your idea, we may offer some advice for you to consider before giving you an application form. If we feel your project is ready, we will send you an application form for you to complete and return to us. Once we have received your completed form, we will assess your application for funding.

A sample application form is available below for you to use as a guide to consider when you contact us.